Catherine Slip Composite

Untitled from brainerd taylor on Vimeo.

Section

Paver Differentiation

Site Analysis . . .

Site Analysis . . .

Site Analysis

Further Notes on RemixAmerica

RemixAmerica as platform. Though open source, much of the content is provided. The founders of RemixAmerica clearly have a left-of-center agenda. Does the medium itself bias toward a liberal demographic? Is there self-selection?

Remix as Demonstration: How effective is this as a platform? Clearly the agenda is to reconfigure one way media – There aren’t just producers and spectators, everybody is a producer (in theory). Either through talk back or remixing, participation is encouraged at every turn.

Short Comings: Maintains assumption about sources. Maintains hierarchy of media distribution; Primary sources/ secondary sources / popularity=distribution. Ultimately the remixes themselves blend together – like too many jumpcuts. The become gibberish, indistinguishable from one another: Re-mush.

We’re supposed to derive consensus from this – as if democracy were discernible in the vociferous nature of it. But does consensus emerge? Can it be gauged? No – the “Multitude” is “Diffuse, formless.” (see Michael Hirsch, "The Space of Community: Between Culture and Politics" p. 293) This is aestheticized protest. Contained. Neat. Digestible.

ALTERNATIVES:

The seat of its proposed power is in the suspension of hierarchy. (In anarchy?) What is the urban equivalent? “City – dense spatial body made from tensions, contradictions, and conflicts” (Hirsch, 295). Locus for conflict. How to stage? Suspend hierarchy. Suspend class. Suspend demographic. Produce! Display! Agenda: Sepratrices to be erased by program: Spectator/Spectacle Sidewalk/Street Pedestrian/Performer Production/Consumption Riff on festival marketplace. Like Seaport to South . . . but not a mall.

GrandStand - work in progress

Other Street Activities . . .

Brand New Alfred Smith Houses . . .

Occupiable Tilt-Shift Lens [defunct]

Two Bridges 1609

Manhatta Two Bridges Dissolve from brainerd taylor on Vimeo.

http://themannahattaproject.org/

Storyboards

Following are several scenarios for projected interactions, using the same LED tracking as my anaolgue:

1. Introduction - Each participant is a primary color dot. Overlapping leads to secondary colors. Like the constituent elements of a pixel . . .

2. Alpha Channels - Each participant is an RGB Channel. They may choose to align, or misalign, altering the image/video

3. Sectional Narrative - Shorts play and pause based on participants location. The section can be more complex to avoid hollywood squares scenario. Alternatively, perhaps one participant could control zoom, while another controls coordinates. Sort of like a non-linear version of Michael Snow's Wavelength.

4. Fractured View - tracks two participants locations - the closer they are, the more aligned the overlaid images. The farther, the more skewed.

5. Drip/Silhouette (from Krink) - Paint slowly drips, registering those who stay as distinct silhouettes, and those who move as blurs. Plays in loop.

6. Doll Parts – Like the kids game with animal parts. Needs more people than I'm sure I can track.

Like my analogue, but better

and simpler too. . .

Site Visit Two

On the 2nd site visit I focused on two spots: Catherine Slip and small triangular wedge named for Robert Wagner. . . Pictures Below:

Max/MSP/Jitter Wrangling

1. Tracking IR Dots:

2. CityScape Shoot

3. Final Patch

Analog Rev

This model revisits previous experiments with head tracking, but now uses two IR cameras simultaneously to motion track four points. The four points are IR LED badges to be worn by participants. The hope is to reconstitute a media broadcast in realtime, and in real space, turning participants' selective media exposure into a performance.

Simplified Diagram and Prelim Analogue

very simple . . .


analogue concept

RemixAmerica 0.3b

Content Access:

Distribution and Regeneration:

Preliminary thoughts on RemixAmerica.org

"To the eye of the consumer [ . . . ] the global media oligopoly is not visible...Newsstands still display rows of newspapers and magazines, in a dazzling array of colors and subjects...Throughout the world, broadcast and cable channels continue to multiply, as do video cassettes and music recordings. But...if this bright kaleidoscope suddenly disappeared and was replaced by the corporate colophons of those who own this output, the collage would go gray with the names of the few multinationals that now command the field.”

- Ben Bagdikian, "Lords of the Global Village," The Nation, June 12, 1989, p. 819.

"My whole thing with this was I didn't want to mess up the Beatles song either, [. . . ] I don't want to disrespect the Beatles. A lot of people thought it was sacrilege in the first place. I knew that would be something, but I didn't know it was going to be [distributed] on a wide scale. I knew my friends wouldn't think it was sacrilege, so I just made sure it was something I would dig myself."

– Danger Mouse, on the Grey Album [interview excerpt from MTV.com]

RemixAmerica.org is a non-profit website attempting to foster political discourse on the Internet. It appears to be Youtube in a microcosm, with a focus on political content. Its most notable innovation is the inclusion of a large existing archive of footage, all immediately compatible with an online editor. Though users may source their own material and edit on their local machines, the creators of RemixAmerica have tried to remove all barriers to the technologically unsavvy.

The site maintains that it is non-partisan, and there is nothing inherently evident in the content/framework of the site to indicate otherwise. It should be noted, however, that a majority of the highlighted videos are left-of-center, indicating either editorial intent or a limited demographic of users. The site is based in Los Angeles, CA.

A primary benefactor is Norman Lear, writer and producer of television sitcoms such as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Maude. His other philanthropic activities include People for the American Way and The Norman Lear Center at USC Annenberg School for Communication. RemxAmerica.org’s executive director is Fred Graver, also a writer and TV producer. He’s worked on National Lampoon, Late Night with David Letterman, and In Living Color.

Users provide content by two primary means: the “Mash Up” and the “Talk Back.” The mash up, or specifically video mash up, incorporates existing content and almost without fail has a political agenda of varying discernability. The “Talk Back” is a vlog comment, recorded by the user, and is often a rant.

My primary focus is on the Mash Up. Is this really the liberating medium its advocates proclaim it to be? Since advent of affordable video, the medium has had a distinctly commercial bent. Something about the disposable nature of it as a format, and the preponderance of TV by the early 70’s intertwined video with consumerism. Witness an early work by William Wegman:

Other video artist dealing directly with consumerism via video include Dan Graham and Bruce Nauman. Though video art would seem to grow out of experimental film as well, works from ManRay through Michael Snow don’t share the undercurrent of consumption.

As video editing became cheaper over the ensuing decades, obvious progenitors to the present day “mash up” emerged. Witness this example from 1994:

More to come . . .

HeadTracking with Wiimote

Interface and Social Diagrams – RemixAmerica.org

Interface: Browse/Comment/Create/Post

Social: Yeah, so it looks like a forum. Note the opaque box; somebody is controlling the content.